


the shadow on the moon at night

by prosodiical



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Halloween, M/M, Trick or Treat: Chocolate Box
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-23
Updated: 2017-10-23
Packaged: 2019-01-22 01:58:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12470936
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prosodiical/pseuds/prosodiical
Summary: Axel takes Roxas to Halloween Town.





	the shadow on the moon at night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cookinguptales](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cookinguptales/gifts).



The sun's sunk nearly entirely below the horizon by the time Roxas finishes his ice cream, and the melting dregs of it have stained the stick blue. It's blank, and he turns it over in his hands, then slides a sidelong glance at Axel sitting beside him. With one foot resting on the edge of the ledge, an elbow on his knee, he looks a moment away from falling; the light casts long, golden shadows across his pensive face.

"Hey," Roxas says, and Axel tilts his head, lifts an eyebrow. Roxas feels his mouth twitch into an answering smile as an easy grin stretches across Axel's face.

"Hey yourself," he says. "Ready to go?"

"I," Roxas says, "I don't know. Can't we stay here?"

"What," Axel says, sardonically, "no love for the home that never was? Nah, I was thinking we could go somewhere exciting - after all, tonight's Halloween."

He rises to his feet and holds out a gloved hand. Roxas looks between Twilight Town and Axel's sly, expectant smile and takes it. "What's Halloween?"

"Seriously?" Axel shakes his head, dropping Roxas's hand to bring up a portal, a person wide and leaking darkness into the sky. "I hope you're ready - this'll be fun."

"Should I be worried?"

"Hey," Axel says, "trust me," and steps through.

Roxas follows him through to a whole new world. Axel's hair is startlingly bright in the gloom as he tilts his head up to the moon, hanging large and oddly close in the sky, and Roxas peers around the graveyard they've ended up in, the misshapen tombstones and ghostly lights glittering in the grey fog. "Look," Axel says, "we fit right in," and he tugs Roxas's hood over his head before he pulls up his own. "Come on, there was something I wanted to check out here. Word is they've been running experiments."

"Experiments," Roxas repeats, doubtfully, and follows Axel's shadow as the mist curls around him. "On what?"

"Heartless, mainly," Axel says, his tone light. "Controlling them. You know the drill."

Roxas says, "No, not really," and is rewarded by Axel's grin. "They... wanted to control Heartless? What for?"

The cobblestones beneath their feet are leading up to a large, iron-wrought gate, and Axel gestures with a flourish. "Because," he says, "this is Halloween Town. And this is Halloween."

Roxas's breath leaves him in a rush as Axel pushes the gate open and he catches his first glimpse of the town square. There's more people here than he can count, a hundred monsters and skeletons and tiny witches in wide-brimmed hats, a creature, spindly and tall, rising high from a pumpkin carriage. The fountain glitters green in the eerie moonlight and Axel snatches a basket of candy shaped like corn from a stall on the verge of collapse, covered in cobwebs with a woman with eight eyes looking out from behind their curtain.

Axel cuts a path through the busy crowds and Roxas barely manages to keep up, stumbling after the wisps of fire-red hair escaping his cloak's hood. He's a shadow in the crowd, a black shape in a dozen of them, and Roxas finds himself falling behind as he looks down at the long mishappen shadows, the illusion of ghosts floating through the air.

A hand grabs his sleeve; Roxas nearly makes a sound until he looks up into Axel's face, deep shadows cast over his face and the curve of his cheekbones, and sees the worried slant to his mouth. "Boo," Axel says, and: "hey, you okay?"

"Yeah," Roxas says, "yeah. Just - don't go?"

"Sure, sure," Axel says, but he's smiling, not the one he wears when he's around the others but something bright, something - himself. He catches himself quickly, turning away, and Roxas immediately misses the warmth of it filling him from the inside. "The lab's this way."

He still keeps a hand on Roxas's sleeve, though, and Roxas can't help his smile.

Up a rickety set of stairs, Axel glances briefly back at the crowd before pushing open the door, and they slip inside the darkened building without anyone the wiser. Axel's the one who flips on the lights, flickering yellow and sterile white, and Roxas trails his fingers through the heavy dust on the bookshelves as Axel flips through the papers on the table.

"What are you looking for?" Roxas wonders, as Axel scowls over whatever he's finding. "If they were controlling Heartless..."

"It didn't work," Axel says. "And this won't, either, if I have anything to say about it."

There's a strange device laid out on the table, a facsimile of a creature given a beating mechanical heart. There's a gleaming metal cap on its head, incongruous with the layers of rust over the rest of the equipment, and Axel lifts it carefully off and sets it down beside its metal-and-fabric joints. Roxas picks it up, turning it over in his hands as Axel summons a flame in his hand, and lifts it up, peering curiously into the inside.

"Hey," Axel says, warning, and Roxas gives him a wan smile and sets it aside as Axel sets the mannequin alight.

The fire's slow to start, flickering yellow and orange, and when Axel turns off the light it casts long shadows across the room, the gleam of sharp implements and strange machines odd in the faint glow of light. Roxas can't help but watch the twisting silhouette of the marionette as it burns until Axel bumps his elbow, and Roxas looks up at him, his cat-green eyes glittering in the dark.

"Is that it?" Roxas says, and Axel's mouth curves.

"One more thing."

Roxas's breath comes short when Axel leans in, when all he can see of him is the dark hollows of his cheeks, the sharp consideration in the fire reflected from his eyes; Roxas's chest aches, strangely, and he swallows and wets his lips, says: "Axel - "

Axel's breath ghosts across Roxas's cheek, and then Roxas feels the telltale rush of wind behind him, the odd sensation of a portal he can't see pulled into existence. "Hey, Roxas," Axel says, "trick or treat?"

"Do I have to pick?"

Axel huffs a laugh that Roxas feels like a foreign bubbling warmth in his gut; there's a strange, empty ache in his chest where his heart would be, something clawing and wanting, as though the heat of Axel's body isn't enough, as though if he pulled him close he'd be able to steal his fire and keep it. "Nah. But it might be fun."

Roxas tilts his head until their noses are brushing, until he can see the long shadows of Axel's eyelashes against the flickering shadow of fire. "Both, then," he says, and is rewarded by the sly curve of Axel's smile.

"Yeah?" he says, "well, Happy Halloween." Axel leans forward the bare inch between them, brushes his mouth against Roxas's for too-brief a moment before he's shoved back —

  


— and Roxas falls —

  


"— touch that!"

For a moment, Sora feels terribly unmoored. He stares down at the odd metal helmet in his hands for a moment too long before he drops it like it burns, shaking his fingers out until they feel more like his own. "He's not even listening," Donald grumbles, and Sora squeezes his eyes shut for a moment and wonders at the strange ache of his heart.

"Hey," he manages to protest, "I'm listening!"

"Then what did I say?"

"Uh," Sora says, and rubs the back of his neck as he gives Donald and Goofy his most winning grin. "You... want to make the best Halloween ever?"

"Well, close enough!" Jack announces, with his usual flair. "I've got a winning idea for this year!"

"Sounds great," Sora says, and looks away from the charred marks on Finklestein's table, from the ball-joints and miscellaneous remnants of a mannequin scattered haphazardly across the floor. He's here for them - for all of them, for the ache in his heart that's Roxas, for the way Roxas feels at Axel's smile - and his own smile comes easier this time. "What do you need us to do?"


End file.
